Work begins on permanent cells

? Three guards watching over detainees at Camp X-ray, the makeshift detention holding 300 men, were reassigned after “breaking the rules,” officials said Sunday.

The guards were moved to another part of the camp, said Marine Maj. Stephen Cox, a spokesman for the mission. They were reassigned for “breaking the rules,” Cox said, but he could not say what the men had done or what their new duties would be.

Since the first captives arrived at this remote outpost in January, some have spat on or yelled at the guards. One inmate bit a guard, and another being treated at the field hospital tried to hit a guard last week.

A hunger strike that began on Feb. 27, but has since fizzled, was apparently prompted by a guard who stripped an inmate of a towel he had put over his head for morning Islamic prayers. Detainees later said the strike was also to protest their indefinite detention.

The captives, accused of having links to either the fallen Taliban regime in Afghanistan or the al-Qaeda terrorist network, are expected to be moved from the hastily built Camp X-ray to Delta Camp by next month.

Workers on Saturday could be seen building the first of 408 cells, which will be equipped with toilets, beds and ventilation _ unlike the open air chain-link cells at Camp X-ray. Eventually, Delta Camp could be expanded to hold more than 2,000 detainees.

Marine Brig. Gen. Michael Lehnert has said that after weeks of interrogations, U.S. officials still do not know the affiliations of some of the detainees here _ though he said that number is shrinking.

“Initially it was a large group, but the group is getting smaller and smaller,” Lehnert said Friday.

He spoke after Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said the Pentagon has finished writing rules for the military tribunals that may be used to try the detainees. No details of the tribunals’ mechanics have been released, and Lehnert said he has not been provided with any specifics.